


The Needlepress School

by SeventhAgent



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Artistic Movements, Bernie Is A Fucking Dork, Blood and Gore, Dark, Gen, Gothic, Other, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Romanticism, Tea, the Feasting War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 20:08:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21379846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeventhAgent/pseuds/SeventhAgent
Summary: Bernadetta Von Varley is the tastemaker of the new school--that is, the school of the bloodsuckers, the victorious Andrestian Empire. Fleche Von Bergliez has written poems of sensation about the dreadful war against Rhea, and she is very, very tired. But the new school always needs new talent. And Fleche, she is quite talented....
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Sanguine Throne (Edelich) AU Multiverse





	The Needlepress School

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [stigmata](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21279911) by [charbroiled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/charbroiled/pseuds/charbroiled). 

"Ah, Bernadetta von Varley! Who among us has not seen her name and emblem emblazoned upon the spine of a book (more often _several_ books). We do admire her here in Greater Andrestia, the reclusive center of the controversial Needlepress School, a literary movement that circles her as waves rage around a hurricane? Glory, delicious fashion, sensuous sweetness and the love of our great Nation; the Needlepress School fumbles after the effortless work of this reclusive genius.

"The acclaimed Poetess and Noveliste--despite suffering a death of her mother and a severe brain injury dealt to her father--shapes the literary tastes of the Immortal Empire itself. Only time will tell if she continues to mold our literature with such beauty, such grace, such devotion to the pleasures and pains.

"Fortunately for Miss von Varley, time is not scarce for her ilk!"

\--from _The Feasting War, Its Participants, and Its Victors: a Thoroughly Updated History (First Edition)_

* * *

No one spoke of the tastes in the Feasting War. Even Bernadetta Von Varley, the central figure of the Needlepress School, the devotee of the senses, did not debase herself by speaking of tastes in that dark time.

Fleche von Bergliez wrote poems for her fears. Not prose, as the Andrestians preferred, but poems for personal consumption. To offload horrors and have others praise her for their own new burdens. She showed these poems to close friends and confidantes. They read them and understood.

They were poems of sensation.

Poems of suffocating in rain among the infantry, the dirty rain dripping helmet-dirt into your mouth. And the dirt, it was polluted with days of battle. Soil debased.

Poems of candlewax, of the scratch of a midnight letter to a dead brother. The contrast between the letter and the reality that would follow two mornings hence. The body that she would be forced to identify. You know. To be sure. And the smell of the thing.

Poems of blood and its taste, freshly stolen from the veins of an enemy soldier towards the end of the war. Spilling up, droplets falling into her mouth. Sothis, the taste unclean, the lingering taste.

Of all of her poems, this last was what passed from a trusted friend to higher places. And so--blinking away as if the Varley estate could vanish for her, as if she could get back to her scribbling exorcisms in a lonely room--Fleche found herself the newest member of the prestigious Needlepress School, wearing fashionable and unfitting finery in a wilting garden prowled by indifferent servants.

One of them--they were all bald, pointed-eared, identical in crisp fashionable suits--had lead her by the hand from the entrance to the center of a vast withered labyrinth of a garden. In this center was a table, and on this table was a steaming kettle of tea, and around it were two chairs.

Fleche rolled her neck. Glanced at the five servants/guards around her and wondered vaguely how many she could take. They clearly weren't human anymore, but Fleche knew enough--not much, just enough--about the way of things in this modern era that this was no surprise.

She studied weaknesses, and the weaknesses proved that they weren't identical after all. This one here, this one lumbered slow. That one had a limp. The other was just barely out of shape. And--and Fleche looked away from the servants, because someone else approached now.

The new footsteps were soft. Ginger. Quick though, and certain. The intruder strode (snaredrum quick) past a line of carnivorous plants, and through the shadow of their beaks Fleche spied frills, folds, silken flowers. All lavender, all almost bursting from the outfit, and yet she walked so quickly.

Nearly dizzying in her speed, in fact. Fleche rolled her neck again, cleared her mind...and froze at the clear clink of a glass.

The servants were pouring them tea--both of them, including the new arrival in the flowing gown.

Even the hood pulling over the arrival's head was covered in frills. The mask, too--a silver-on-violet Crest of Indech, inverted. The silver oval of the crest's design fit tight against the visitor's lips.

But she didn't talk. Fleche sat back in her chair, two cups of tea steaming before her, as the arrival calmly scribbled onto a long scroll of parchment.

"_Hello, Fleche. Welcome to the Von Varley Estate. I do not talk. I am only here to welcome visitors to enter Lady Bernadetta's inner circle."_

Fleche swallowed. "Do I--" she gestured to the quill and parchment. The visitor shook her head. "Okay. Nice to meet you. What's your name?"

"_My name is of no importance. I am merely your guide here; I shepherd you into this land of _"

(Fleche took a sip of tea. It was minty.)

_"the senses, of despair and art, of romance and the vile sublime. In time you shall sink, if you wish, into the darker depths of the circle. You shall see our mad rites and learn what great poets we have claimed for our own. Should you be lucky"_

(Fleche sipped more tea)

_", perhaps you shall meet our illustrious leader, the founder of our great school: Bernadetta von Varley. The Pale Lady, She Who Writes in Shadow. And--_"

"Which is you, right?"

The visitor paused.

"I mean, you're Bernadetta. You have the, err. The Crest of Indech on your face. It's upside-down, but."

"Excuse me?" the figure squeaked. "I--" The figure cleared her throat.

"_A most fascinating hypothesis, young one. Only time shall reveal the merit of it, or the lack thereof. How is that tea?"_

"It's good. A little, uh." Fleche cleared her throat. "I don't know, my throat is dry. Can I have some more?"

_"Not yet."_

"So you're _not_ Bernadetta, then."

"_Does it matter to you?"_

"Yes. I wanted to meet her."

The figure tapped her fingers on the table. Fleche waited for her to write something, to say something, to _do _anything. But she kept rapping her fingers against the table patiently, quietly.

"I know," said Fleche, "that there are usually hoops to jump through. I know that. I never thought of myself as a reading type, either. But when I started reading her work, I really, um. I don't know, I just thought--we fought in the same war and all, and. See, I'm not good with words when I'm talking."

_"Do you really mean all of that? Because I'm sure she would appreciate it. I'll deliver it directly to her. She speaks very highly of you, too, you know. I know that for a fact._"

"Because you _are _her, right?"

The masked figure sighed.

Fleche smiled cheerfully. The figure rapped her fingers against the table, and Fleche watched her knuckles blurring.

"_You are very sharp," _the figure wrote. _"I would accept no one else into my circle. But you clearly haven't read enough of Miss Von Varley's work. Sipping tea with a mysterious stranger? Come on, now. Did you really tnihk haatt asw a rightb deai cbaues"_

The text scrambled. The ground suddenly seemed extraordinarily soft. Fleche fell into it and barely felt a thing.

(She would when she woke.)

The last thing Fleche von Bergliez recalled was a pale, purple-haired stranger glaring down at her, pleading, spittle flying from her mouth:

"Why aren't you people more _fun_?"


End file.
